Malcolm J. Crocker

Peppin:

This is Rich Peppin. Today is February 4th, 2021. I’m doing a telephone interview with Malcolm Crocker. It’s 11:00 Eastern Standard Time. [Break in recording] So, what’s your present address? [Response redacted] OK, good. Your present telephone number? [Response redacted] OK, thank you. Your present employer, although we both know. Go ahead.

Crocker:

I retired from Auburn University ten years or so ago.

Peppin:

Really? It was that long ago? [Laughter]

Crocker:

Maybe ten or eleven years ago. Oh, I don’t know exactly. I start to lose track.

Peppin:

Right. OK, I think we answered everything in the first part.

Crocker:

OK.

Peppin:

One quick question. How long have you lived at that address?

Crocker:

About twelve years. We moved from another house in town about ten, twelve years ago. We lived there for twenty-five years after coming to Auburn.

Peppin:

From Purdue?

Crocker:

Yes, from Purdue. I was at Purdue for fourteen years.

Peppin:

Well, OK. I think that’s everything we need for preliminary info.

Crocker:

Great.

Peppin:

OK, good. Just moving on, do you remember the year you joined the ASA [the Acoustical Society of America]?

Crocker:

It was 1966 or I believe it could have been ‘65 or ‘66. 1966.

Peppin:

What was your age and profession at the time?

Crocker:

Well, I would have been 28, I think. I was working at Wyle Labs in Huntsville, Alabama on various things, on the Saturn V launch noise and vibration, and also on the supersonic transport that Lockheed was trying to build. I actually made the cabin noise prediction for the Lockheed supersonic transport. But in the competition Boeing won out. And then of course, later, the whole thing was canceled. They were worried about sonic booms made over land. I was working then at Wyle Labs in Huntsville.

Peppin:

It’s funny because I was working at Bendix Corporation in Teterboro [New Jersey] at the same time, and I was working on the Saturn V guidance system, the guidance system at that time. Amazing.

Crocker:

I actually had pieces of the Saturn-IC and with a siren I did the noise tests on it. We were looking for metal fatigue. And then we took pieces of full-scale Saturn V and shook them for a month or more with a million-dollar computer. The Saturn piece was located in a hole in the ground we had built at Wyle, Huntsville, for the purpose. And we also put a piece of the full-scale Saturn V in a reverberation room that we had built at Wyle in Huntsville and blasted it with noise from a siren for a long time.

Peppin:

Wow.

Crocker:

It was very exciting in those days because there was a lot of money that the government was throwing at the problem. And often there were several teams working on the same problem simultaneously. Sometimes we found out that someone else was working on the same thing independently because the government was making such an overwhelming effort to get men sent to the Moon by 1970.

Peppin:

Right, I remember. Tell me the reasons you joined the ASA.

Crocker:

Well, I was working at Wyle Lab in those years, and then for one year in 1966 to 1967 in California with LTV, Ling Temco Vought. It was always on acoustics and noise — noise and vibration caused by noise.

Peppin:

But I mean, you picked ASA. You heard about it somewhere or how did that happen?

Crocker:

ASA was well-known, from the JASA journal that they had. I was reading the journal and writing papers to give at the ASA conferences. I don’t know exactly how it started, but other people were members of the ASA in the Wyle research group. And they would have found out about the conferences. And I went to one in Boston, I remember, early on in 1965 I think.

Peppin:

Were you a member of any ASA committees, per se, like noise?

Crocker:

I was involved with the Noise Committee and once I was made chair for a short time and then I went to Australia on sabbatical leave for a year in 1976. And so I had to give up being chair. And I was later on a member of the Archives and History Committee.

Peppin:

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing now. I’m on the Archives and History Committee.

Crocker:

I was on Archives and History with several people. Bill Cavanaugh, I remember, was chair once.

Peppin:

Yes, right. I remember, too.

Crocker:

A lot of people were on this committee.

Peppin:

Yes. Were there any ASA meetings that were particularly interesting to you? Do you remember anything special about any of them?

Crocker:

Yes, I remember one. I had become interested in Lord Rayleigh and his books on acoustics, and I found out that one of his grandsons, Guy Strutt, was still alive, living just east of London at Terling Place. And I went there and found a lot of letters of Rayleigh, who was originally Strutt, but when his father died he became Lord Rayleigh. He had to leave Cambridge when he got married. He was working at Trinity College, Cambridge University at the time. So, he then went back to his farm and he built a scientific research laboratory at his big ancestral house, Terling Place, east of London. And so I got to know the grandson, Guy Strutt, and stayed with him at the Old Rectory several times. I copied all these letters stored in the Terling Place attic. I have still got photocopies of many of these letters. And I talked here to the Acoustical Society secretary and they paid for Guy Strutt’s travel to come over from England to an Acoustical Society meeting in Seattle in the West Coast. We had a special session on Lord Rayleigh. We had well-known figures in the U.S. taking part — Alan Powell, Steve Crandal, David Blackstock, and about six or seven others. So, that was a remarkable session. Several of the verbal papers were written up and published in JASA. It attracted quite a lot of attention.

Peppin:

What year was that?

Crocker:

I think it was in 1987. Also, my Encyclopedia of Acoustics, John Wiley & Sons, was published in 1987. Bill Cavanaugh arranged for me to get a special award from the Acoustical Society. I’m not quite sure of the title. So, I had to give a lecture on the Encyclopedia then. That was another one I remember. I used to go almost every year to all the ASA meetings until about ten years ago.

Peppin:

The Lord Rayleigh one, was that 1997 or was that before that?

Crocker:

It was late 1986 or ‘87. It attracted a lot of interest. And then at the hotel I had a lot of copies of Rayleigh letters and I arranged a reception at the hotel for the Rayleigh session speakers and anyone else interested. I had a room at the hotel where I put these photocopies of the letters up on posters on the wall.

Peppin:

Nice.

Crocker:

Yes, it was worth doing — interest was high.

Peppin:

Were there members at ASA who really influenced you?

Crocker:

Well, of course, I got to know Bill [William W.] Lang well. I don’t know if that was mostly through the ASA. But it started earlier in 1970, I think, after I organized the Purdue Noise Control Conference. They contacted me then. I got to know Leo Beranek, too, whom I met several times later. I think it was through the ASA, but I’m not sure exactly how I made first contact.

Peppin:

Right. That would make sense, though, because there was no INCE [Institute of Noise Control Engineering] or anything like it at the time. And that’s probably where you met those guys that you know.

Crocker:

Well, let me think… 1972. That’s how INCE started. So, when I graduated with my Ph.D. in 1969, I unexpectedly had a job offer from Purdue. The people at Purdue contacted Phil [Philip E.] Doak, the editor of the Journal of Sound and Vibration, an American living in the U.K., and asked for suggestions. And he said, “Well, Crocker is the most get-up-and-go mover” — he said, “best self-starter” — “of the people I know of” and suggested me for the job. So, I went to Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana for an interview in 1969, and after they made me a job offer, I went over as an associate professor faculty member in November 1969.

Peppin:

And we’ll get to that part. We’ll get to that part in a couple of minutes.

Crocker:

OK, a bit later.

Peppin:

Is there anything special you want to say about the ASA before we leave the topic of ASA?

Crocker:

It is an academic organization more than a practical one. It has practical [applications] but its mostly academic. And it’s been going since 1929, so I knew about it. It was a good home for me. I got to know people and it was a good place to go to. I used to go almost every six months to their meetings.

Peppin:

Do you still belong to ASA? Are you like a life member or something?

Crocker:

I was created as a fellow, I think, in 1973 or 1974. Now I’m retired. I don’t classify it as retirement. I’m a non-dues-paying ASA member.

Peppin:

Yes, me too.

Crocker:

Yes, that’s very nice what they do.

Peppin:

Do you belong to other professional societies?

Crocker:

ASME [American Society of Mechanical Engineers], I was active with them for quite a number of years, but at retirement they want you to pay half dues. I did for a while and then I haven’t paid lately.

Crocker:

And I was a member of the INCE for a long time and edited their journal, Noise Control Engineering, as you know. Which has an interesting history, if you want to ask me about that later. I was also an active member of ASEE [the American Society of Engineering Education] and of ASHRAE [American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning].

Peppin:

Have you done any of the oral histories by anybody?

Crocker:

No. This would be the first one.

Peppin:

OK, good. [Laughter]

Crocker:

My first and last one maybe.

Peppin:

[Laughter] I know what you mean. OK, so now for past history. So, when and where were you born?

Crocker:

Portsmouth, England, 1938. That’s in the middle of the south coast.

Peppin:

Okay.

Crocker:

Portsmouth is our biggest natural naval harbor. That’s where Lord Nelson had his flagship ship, Victory, used in fighting the French, and where half the 1944 invasion fleet for Normandy came from.

Peppin:

Before you went to college, where were some of the places you lived?

Crocker:

Well, Portsmouth until I was 11, and then we moved to Weymouth, about 60 miles west along the south coast to Weymouth in Dorset. That’s right next to Portland Harbour, an artificial harbor, that was again used fighting the French in the 1800s. And the other half of the Normandy invasion fleet came from there, so those were the two main places I lived before I went to college.

Peppin:

OK. What were your parents’ occupations?

Crocker:

Both were teachers. My father was a teacher and my mother too.

Peppin:

As a youngster, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? Did you have any feeling for where you were headed?

Crocker:

Well, not very much. In those days, I attended what you might call a high school in the U.S. The high school I went to never gave any guidance much except in the very last year, when they got you thinking about a career. I was always interested in aircraft because of the Second World War. England had a huge aircraft industry in those days until 1960. It had a million people working in it. Well, it was one of the strongest in the world since the wartime. I made model aircraft. Maybe you will ask me about that later. I made model aircraft from balsa wood, and I was always interested in aircraft. So, I gradually got the idea of studying aeronautical engineering later.

Peppin:

Were these models balsa aircraft? Were they flyable or were they just models?

Crocker:

No, they were just models. In those days, they sent you balsa wood and a plan and you had to carve them with an Exacto knife, smooth them with sandpaper, and then paint them. I’ve still got one. The others have gradually become lost. I had a whole lot. I had about fifteen to twenty different ones. And my brother made them too. So, we were both making these things.

Peppin:

What was your brother’s name?

Crocker:

Donald.

Crocker:

So, both my name, Malcolm, and Donald, too, are Scottish names. We don’t know why our parents thought of them. [Laughter]

Peppin:

[Laughter] And so you grew up during World War II. And how did that affect you?

Crocker:

I do remember well in Portsmouth. The German bombers went to the Midlands from occupied France. They were bombing the places of manufacture of vehicles and aircraft. And of course, Coventry Cathedral was bombed then, too. But as they came back flying south from the Midlands, over the south coast, they would pass over Portsmouth quite often. So, every night they would drop bombs, because if you had a bomb still on board, you couldn’t land with it. So, as you left England, you’d drop your last bomb. So, Portsmouth had 1,500 alerts. In the evening, you heard OoooooooOooooooo Oooooooo [imitating the sound of a siren], the air-raid siren, and in the morning the all-clear sounded at 6:00 in the morning: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, like that.

And one memory, which I’d like to tell you about: I would go with my mother every night to our air-raid shelter behind our house, where they had dug a hole in the ground and had put a concrete slab over it. It was in the back garden [yard], and we would go down there every night with my mother and brother. My father had suffered from tuberculosis, so he was not able to fight because he was just recovering. He had one collapsed lung. Every night he was an air raid warden going around checking the houses during the blackout. And one night — it’s going to be 1944 or 1945, I remember distinctly as it was getting dusk — Pop, pop, pop, pop, Pop, pop, pop, pop. It was a V-1 flying bomb, and you could see its little exhaust light in the sky as it was going along. I remember that would have been right after the Normandy landing or around that time when the V-1 attacks started. And another time, for some reason, I wasn’t in the dugout shelter one night and I remember being in the house. I was on my own behind the sofa in the sitting room. I went to the window and pulled the curtains back and I saw the searchlights scanning the sky way up. Green and red tracer bullets were trying to highlight the planes. Of course, it was extremely difficult to hit anything with the guns, particularly at night. So, it just made the local people feel more confident that something was being done. I saw that myself when I must have been just five or six.

Another time, I went to the hospital. I had got scarlet fever as a child. I would have been five or six in 1944 or ‘45. I remember coming back in an ambulance with just one nurse with me and looking up at the blue sky. This must have been in 1944, or something like that. And then like a bighead, you know, as a little child saying, look at those white tracings in the sky going round and intertwined up in the sky over Portsmouth. So, I remember a few things from the war, but I was quite young.

And, you know, in 1940, they were worried about gas, poison gas being used, like in the First World War twenty years earlier. So, thirty million gas masks were made, issued to everyone free of charge. And I was only a one-year-old — well, a one-and-a-half one. I was given one to get into as a baby. I was slipped into this thing. But to think what a small country like that could do for all its population. And what we did for our people with the pandemic was nothing like it.

Peppin:

[Laughter] Right, right.

Crocker:

They did it. I mean, it’s only a small country, it’s not really wealthy, and it produced all that. And I was evacuated — as children, many were, in 1939 to ‘40 — sent some miles away from Portsmouth with my mother. So, we went away. It wasn’t very good. They call that time the ‘phony war’. There was no bombing or anything like that for the first several months [of the war]. So, everyone came back from the evacuation, of course. Then the bombing started later. Anyway, sorry, I got off on the wrong tack about the war.

Peppin:

No, no. Good. OK, let’s go back.

Crocker:

Because, you know, for me and my generation, the Second World War colored everything [in our lives].

Peppin:

Yes.

Crocker:

And after that, England was just about bankrupt. It took a long time [for the country] to recover. It was helped by the Marshall Plan. The U.S. had this program to help European countries recover [from the war].

Peppin:

Right. Back now, where did you go to college? What was your first college and what was your major?

Crocker:

It was Southampton University, because by that time I got very interested in aircraft and hoped to do something in the future. So, I looked around and, in the U.K., there were only four or five universities that did anything with aeronautical engineering: Bristol University; Birmingham did something, but not much; Queen Mary College, London; and Southampton had an aeronautical engineering degree. So, after my high school exams at 18, I received two possibilities for financial support at university. One was an offer of an aircraft company scholarship. This required doing an apprenticeship, which in the U.S. you’d call a co-op program. I worked at an aircraft company. It was with Supermarine Aircraft, the company that had made the Spitfire. The second was what’s called a county major scholarship. So, I had a choice to make at the age of 18; I chose the Supermarine possibility. I had to do a year at Supermarine Aircraft Works in Swinden before university — that should be in 1957. And each summer I had to go to them, and also I had to work for them for a year after finishing my degree. I went to Southampton University where they had an aeronautical engineering degree program.

Peppin:

Gotcha. Did you belong to any special clubs or activities or anything like that?

Crocker:

One that came to mind was unusual: on Monday nights, I and the three others living in the lodgings went to the Scottish dancing club at the university. That was good exercise. We also drove up to Scotland to take part in a big Scottish dancing event. That was interesting. I belonged to the sailing club, too. But I can’t remember other things. I was studying mostly.

Peppin:

Were there any people in college or outside college who influenced you at the time? Did you have any, like, heroes or anything?

Crocker:

Well, not so many. I had good college friends, of course, but not so many then. But later there were more when I was involved in the master’s degree. After my time at Supermarine Aircraft, I moved to Vickers Aircraft at Weybridge in Surrey, because they were constructing the Vickers Vanguard and the VC10, the four-engine jet airliner. After doing my time at Supermarine and Vickers — it would have been in 1963 — I went back to Southampton to do a master’s degree. Then I had a scholarship that Professor Richards had got for me. So, I did a year’s master’s degree in 1963. Professor Richards was a very big influence in my life then.

Peppin:

That was in Southampton too? You got the master’s at Southampton?

Crocker:

Yes. That would have been in 1963 to ‘64.

Peppin:

Did the scholarship support you financially?

Crocker:

Enough, yes. So, while I was doing the bachelor’s degree, I had four pounds a week — four pounds, five shillings a week, which seems like nothing now. But it was enough just to live on very modestly, enough for lodging and food and everything else. And later, for my master’s degree also at Southampton, I had — I don’t know exactly the amount — 600 pounds a year or something like that. It was enough to support me doing my master’s degree. Professor Elvyn Richards was very energetic. He rushed around. He designed aircraft for the Vickers Aircraft company. He’d carried out the aeronautical design of the Vickers Viscount, the four-engine turboprop. It was very successful in its time. The company sold three or four hundred turboprop aircraft in the 1950s. And, he was their chief aerodynamicist. But then he left and he went to Southampton University where he was also very energetic. He had started a master’s degree on noise and vibration, which had lectures and a thesis. In the U.K., before that, a master’s degree had to been done with only a thesis and research studies. So, we had lectures on math and acoustics and vibration and other topics. So, I worked on a project under him on turbulence, trying to create intense turbulence in a wind tunnel to excite structures.

Peppin:

Was your master’s thesis on turbulence?

Crocker:

Yes. I don’t remember the exact title, but it was about methods to increase turbulence [in order to excite structures and to fatigue structures with very intense turbulence]. I worked on that topic with him.

Peppin:

All right. And then you went on for a doctorate. Where was that?

Crocker:

Well, that’s after I did the three to four years with Wyle Labs in Huntsville, and then shortly afterwards with LTV in California for a year. I was always working on acoustics. So, I looked around and I applied to Southampton; they didn’t have anything to support me. I was [living] in the U.S. then. My family members were all back in England. But I wrote to Liverpool University, and they were quite interested in me. They had a [U.K.] government Science Research Council grant on sound transmission through structures, and they offered me a position. I think I was called a reader. So, I was someone who wasn’t involved in teaching, but just in research. And I was paid like an assistant professor for two years at Liverpool. That was from 1967 to ‘69.

Peppin:

What was your thesis on?

Crocker:

Well, it was on sound transmission, mostly, but I had taken a course with Richard Lyon [Dick Lyon] in 1965-66 on SEA [statistical energy analysis]. It was very new then, and I applied it [to sound transmission through panels] with suggestions from Lyon. I visited him [in the U.S.] and he came to visit me twice in England. He became like an unofficial Ph.D. advisor. So, I used the SEA approach on sound transmission through panels and published it along with another fellow student [John Price].

Peppin:

I got you.

Crocker:

And so my research was mostly on SEA — I think I called it sonically induced vibration of structures, something like that. I’ll tell you later. I organized and chaired a conference on it in 1969 at Liverpool on that topic, sonically induced vibration of structures.

Peppin:

When you were a doctoral student, did you do any teaching also?

Crocker:

Since I had the background of SEA, I did some. With the other graduate students, I offered to give some lectures on statistical energy analysis that I had learned right through the [Lyon] short course and through my studies. It was just unofficial. Otherwise, I wasn’t teaching formally.

Peppin:

Now, when you were working with Dick Lyon, was that here in the States and occasionally when he came to England?

Crocker:

Well, OK, let me try to reconstruct it. It was from 1965 until ‘66. There was a nine-session short course offered in Van Nuys, California. And so I was paid to go to it and there were nine or ten others [taking it too]. I remember all of them taking this [course]. And we met once a month for some hours and Dick Lyon gave [the] lectures. I think he gave most of the lectures. Although there was a woman lecturer who was from MIT, Sheila Widnall, who later became Secretary of the Air Force. There was also another man, Ed Kerwin from BBN [Bolt Beranek and Newman in Boston]. And so, I got to know [Dick Lyon] well.

And during the time when I got back to England, I invited him [asking], “Would you like to come to my parent’s house [in Weymouth, England]?” Well, later he did come with his wife. He came and stayed there one summer, in ‘68, I think it was. LTV paid for me to fly back to the U.S. when I was doing my Ph.D. to give a paper on “oscillating shocks exciting structures.” That was at [the AIAA/ASME meeting in] Palm Springs in 1968. And on the way, I stopped at Dick Lyon’s house [in Boston] again and talked about the research I was doing on sound transmission [predictions] using SEA. And he gave me some ideas. Also, I met with Gideon Maidanik at the David Taylor Model Basin in Washington D.C. Gideon was an expert on SEA at the time. So, I got to know him quite well also.

And then, as I told you, in early 1969, at the end of my Ph.D. studies. I got the idea of organizing an international conference at Liverpool [University] on structure-borne sound. It was called Sonically Induced Vibration of Structures. And Dick Lyon came from the U.S. to that conference too and gave a special lecture. And a lot of people came — three people from the U.S., people from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and a very large number of Southampton University people came, too. So, we had about 100 people meeting about this special topic. I had a secretary I had hired through “Manpower.” We wrote all the invitation letters and arranged the scientific program. Afterwards, there was 400 pounds [sterling] left over. We had some people for whom we paid their travel expenses. They paid to stay at the hall of residence for students and there was a banquet as well. Dick Lyon gave the keynote speech. Professor Richards was the guest of honor. And really at this point, with the money left, I gave it to the then Acoustical Society of the United Kingdom. It was called the British Acoustical Society before they changed their name to the Institute of Acoustics. And I have still got the letter where I was sending 400 pounds leftover to Professor Richards, and he wrote back thanking me very much. So, that’s the gist of it, how I got to know Dick Lyon. And I kept in touch with him, you know, through sending Christmas cards and continued ever since, until he passed away two years ago.

Peppin:

OK, we’ll move on to other training. Were you ever in the military?

Crocker:

No, but in my high school, every Tuesday afternoon I had to do cadet force training, it was in 1957 right after the war. Once a year we all in the cadet force went to a special all-day event. No, so I never was in the military itself.

Peppin:

OK, let’s go to the past professional career. So, after college, you went directly to a master’s degree and then you went to, was it Wyle Labs? No. Then you went to California, right?

Crocker:

OK, so after high school, let me think… I undertook a “sandwich course” program — what you would call in the USA a “co-op” program. This took five years at the aircraft company, Supermarine, and then later Vickers-Armstrong aircraft [mixed in with three years at Southampton University]. The two companies were amalgamated later to became one aircraft company. Soon after my sandwich program, I went to Southampton University again and studied for a year for this master’s degree on Noise and Vibration. And then I had two job offers to go to Huntsville, Alabama, to work on the NASA Saturn V space program to send astronauts to the Moon. One offer was from Wyle Labs, and the other one was from Brown Engineering. They were both based in Huntsville. These job offers were unsolicited. The interviewers [I remember Bernard Spice as one] came to Southampton University to try to recruit people. They recruited several people from Southampton. And I went to Wyle Labs in 1963. I must remember the exact date… I think it was November 1963.

Peppin:

What was your title there?

Crocker:

Research Scientist. I had a traumatic experience flying across the Atlantic in November 1963. And when I got to New York, I had to fly on to Huntsville, Alabama, and I went to the ticket counter and said, “Can I have my ticket or boarding pass [to go on to Huntsville]?” And he said, “Wait a minute.” So, he turned his back on me. All of the counter staff at the airport were looking at a small black and white TV screen — or they may have had several of them. And for 20 to 30 minutes, they were all just watching. I was ignored. And you know what they were doing? Watching President Kennedy’s funeral cortege going along in Washington DC.

Peppin:

Holy crow!

Crocker:

Yes, he was looking at this [TV screen] and then he turned around and gave me my boarding pass to go on. So, it’s, you know, very memorable. I remember it to this day.

Peppin:

So how long were you there, in Huntsville?

Crocker:

Nearly three years. And then in 1966 — I have to get this right — 1966 in Huntsville, everything for the Saturn V and the Moon landing had been done: spacesuits designed, etc., all the [complicated] details. Different teams were working on everything. It was a crash program. So, Huntsville was losing people. They were moving away. So, I got this job offer in California for LTV. And I was doing similar things there for nine months before I started to think, maybe I’ll try to do a Ph.D.

Peppin:

What was your title with LTV?

Crocker:

It would have been something like a Research Scientist.

Peppin:

OK, then when you went back to England you got your Ph.D. And then what happened there?

Crocker:

Well, I interviewed for a job at Liverpool University. That would have been in 1969. There were three candidates, and I was given the job offer, so I sort of accepted it. It might have been like high school teaching [if I had stayed at Liverpool]. I would have had to teach 16 to 18 contact hours a week on all sorts of different undergraduate topics — lecturing and very little time to do research, which was a burning interest for me in acoustics at that time. And so, until that time at Liverpool, I had been involved in an acoustics research program, research mostly on sound transmission through walls. And then suddenly out of the blue, Ray [Raymond] Cohen at Herrick Labs at Purdue [University] contacted me, as I told you before, because Phil Doak had suggested it. And I went for an interview at Purdue. And I remember that they paid for me to go. And they offered me a job there as an associate professor and it meant me teaching one graduate course each semester. And then later, I started teaching an undergraduate noise control course as well. And all the time I was in charge of the acoustics research program [at the Herrick Labs]. I was mostly working on industrial noise and vibration problems. I did that for 14 years.

Peppin:

Did you get promoted, by the way? I mean, eventually, did you make professor and so on?

Crocker:

In those days you were not told you were being considered for a promotion. Suddenly I was promoted to full professor after two or three years. I was surprised.

Peppin:

OK, that was for 14 years. Then what then? Then you switched.

Crocker:

Then my wife, Ruth, started studying in the evening as our two children grew up. She took evening courses, of which at Purdue some were offered. And she got an MA and then a Ph.D. in history. But it was very hard to get [academic] jobs in history. We, together, started looking for other positions. So, I got this position at Auburn University as the Mechanical Engineering Department Head and she negotiated a faculty position with the History Department there. And eventually, they offered her a position too.

Peppin:

Oh, nice. Nice.

Crocker:

It was very hard for married couples to get two jobs in the same university.

Peppin:

Was it hard for you to move to Alabama? I mean, a whole different state in the South.

Crocker:

Well, I believe we had lived together, both of us, in Huntsville for three years. Then we lived in a bubble of people from all over the world. Well, at Auburn University, again, it was a big university and fourteenth in size of undergraduate programs in the nation, out of 280 engineering programs. It was very large and there were people from many different cities, so it really wasn’t much like being in [a very different state].

Peppin:

Oh yeah, cosmopolitan.

Crocker:

It was mostly a rural area of farms [and forests]. And it was similar and not so much different, really, from Purdue University in Indiana.

Peppin:

Right. How long were you there, in Auburn?

Crocker:

I started in 1983. I served as department head for seven years, and then I was promoted to distinguished university professor, and, as I said, I retired nine or ten years ago. So that would be from 1983 to the year 2010.

Peppin:

About twenty-eight years or something like that? I can’t figure it out, OK. Anyway, you retired about twelve years ago, you say? Yes, in 2010.

Crocker:

It’d be like twenty-seven years I was active.

Crocker:

So, I had some [distinguished university professor] grant funds to help me each year. That’s what they did in those days. There were three of us [distinguished university professors created in the year 1990], one from History and another one from Electrical Engineering and myself [from Mechanical Engineering]. Auburn had just created these new distinguished positions. They’ve got a few more now. So, it was a good position to have. And I did some teaching. I didn’t have to, but I did some teaching of acoustics courses and noise courses. And then I taught a statics and dynamics course, as well. From then on, I mostly did funded research along with my graduate students.

Peppin:

And after that time did you do work at all? After 2011?

Crocker:

You know, in the early days, once that INCE started, I was very much involved in the INCE every year. You know, in 1972, I was the first Inter-Noise General Chair…

Peppin:

Right, you started it.

Crocker:

Well, I had run a noise conference at Purdue all on my own. People were quite impressed. Leo Beranek and Bill Lang and George Maling and others were impressed with its success. I had this invitation to be the first chair, General Chair, of the 1972 Inter-Noise conference. It had 1,400 participants. It was very successful.

Peppin:

Right. Did you attend the Arden House meetings?

Crocker:

Yes, I went to almost all of those. In fact, I was there in the early days, I was one of the officers. I remember during one snowstorm one winter I flew there [to Arden House]. Bill Lang told me [then], "If you had not come, we would not have had a quorum [for the executive meeting]." And others didn’t make it. Well, somehow, I flew through all the snow and got there.

Crocker:

Did you go to the Arden House meetings yourself?

Peppin:

Yes, I was there. So, there was some time though that you left INCE; did you start IIAV [International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration]?

Crocker:

Well, what happened, the INCE USA started in 1972 and by 1973 they’d had an Inter-Noise each year, and I think one — I think 1993 was in Copenhagen, so I was involved in helping with that. So, in 1974 we were in London at the ICA meeting. And Bill Lang, Eric Rata, Fritz Ingerslev, and myself, the four of us, met in the Jury’s Hotel in London and decided to start an international INCE: INCE-International. So, we were the four founding directors of the International-INCE.

Then later, in 1990 and ‘92, I ran two conferences with a colleague at Auburn on sonically induced vibration of structures, like the one at Liverpool I’d done earlier. First, there were 120 people and then 200 and about 300 in ‘94. And in ‘94, Richard Guy and I chaired this now biannual conference in Montreal. So far, I had taken all the financial risk myself ln Montreal and people wanted to continue the series. One evening in Montreal at the conference, I called together scientists from ten countries and we decided to create a non-profit organization to run the conferences in the future. And so, we created the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration [IIAV]. Sir James Lighthill and I, David Newland from Cambridge University in the U.K., and Hanno Heller from Germany formed the founding directors of the IIAV. We three [Heller, Newland and I] went to meet Sir James at University College, London, and tried to talk him into being the first president of this new organization. He agreed to do this. So, we were the four founding directors of the IIAV. So, it became incorporated in 1995. He said, “I must be mad. I’m 70.” But he agreed to be the founding president and he became very excited about doing this. You know, he’d done the theory on jet noise and he was very famous, and that helped us get the IIAV going. And so, then we soon had a conference in December 1996 in Australia, then in 1999 in Copenhagen, and then it became held annually after that. But Sir James died in 1998 of a swimming accident. So, that’s how it all started.

Peppin:

But then you sort of moved away from INCE didn’t you, and you got more involved with IIAV?

Crocker:

Would I have to talk about the unhappy period, then, about what happened?

Peppin:

I mean, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know. You could talk about, well… you don’t have to talk about it, you know.

Crocker:

I don’t know if you want to record all this or leave it. Yes, I can talk about that, too, if you like. Bill Lang and I, since 1972, I drove all the books for an Inter-Noise short course from Purdue to Washington, D.C. in a U-Haul, I think it was called. And I drove there all the books that were printed for the short course. And in ’72, it was all very exciting with this new series of Inter-Noise conferences, the first one. And from then onwards, every year Bill Lang and I taught a short course in conjunction with each Inter-Noise, whether it was in the US or overseas. And the first time the short course was offered in ’72, we had 160 students because it was very topical — the decade of the environment, you know. The main idea was to raise money to support INCE. Holding these annual short courses was very successful financially for INCE. These resulted in a large financial reserve for INCE, which Ken Eldred invested in high-yield financial instruments.

And then with President Carter later, the government was very worried about the environment and created a government noise-control office. The EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] was the main noise-control office they started. So, Bill Lang and I did it until 1984, for twelve or thirteen years we taught these short courses together. The last one INCE put on, Bill no longer took part in it. 1984 was in Hawaii, I taught one at the Inter-Noise there, I think. And then gradually the numbers attending these short courses got smaller and smaller: everyone was putting on short courses on noise. So, the last one only had five or six people and gradually these INCE courses disappeared. Bill Lang went with me in 1990 to Russia — then it was still the Soviet Union — Russia was starting to ease up politically. You know, the Soviet Union was in its death throes.

At Auburn, later in 1990 and 1992, I thought I’d like to start holding some acoustics conferences. They didn’t do anything much there in the way of running conferences and none at all were international. So, I and a colleague started these conferences. And in 1993, I was invited by a Russian professor, Nickolay Ivanov, who is a noise person, to help run an international conference in St. Petersburg in 1993. I told the INCE people in one of our board of directors’ meetings that I had been invited to help run this conference in Russia in 1993 on noise and vibration. And they just passed it off with hardly any comments, nothing much was said about it at all. But they never thought it would be so successful. But we worked very hard at organizing the conference. So, in 1993, I had a letter from Bill Lang faxed to me during the conference in St. Petersburg, where we had 300 scientific people from foreign countries and 400 Russians. The Russians were very poor in those days. The currency was going downhill rapidly. But we had enough income from the overseas participants to pay for the Russians to have lunches and everything [else]. And there was [still] money left over. The Russians told me that they thought this was the largest meeting of scientists and engineers from other countries that had ever been held in Russia. That was their opinion.

So, it was very successful. And in the middle of the conference, a fax arrived from Bill Lang and signed by two others. One was a man at the NPL [National Physical Labs] in UK — I’ll censor his name right now. It was very unpleasant. It was a letter sent to my dean [of engineering] at Auburn trying to threaten me to stop me doing these conferences. They thought that my loyalty should be to INCE only and not anything else, I suppose. And I showed that letter to Dick Lyon. There were people from all over the world at the conference. Dick Lyon from the USA was at the conference, Manfred Heckl from Germany — he was a very famous acoustician — then there was the editor of the Journal of Sound and Vibration, the American living in England, Phil Doak. There were a lot of well-known people there. I shared the fax with Dick Lyon. He was very surprised. He said, “That’s horrible." They were threatening me. And they also sent a copy of the fax to my dean of engineering. And they told me to stop running these conferences.

Well, Dick Lyon said, “You could sue them. You have done a great thing bringing this conference to Russia.” I said you can’t sue people all in different countries. Well, I think one who signed was Jens Blauert from Germany. [He is now my friend.] And of course, my associate dean protected me from my dean. He didn’t show it to the dean. And when I got back, I thought, well, I’m not going to do anything more with INCE after this behavior. And so, in 1994 I was sort of called to a meeting. I was still editing the Noise Control Engineering Journal. I had done it for ten years. And I was called to the U.S. northeast in Boston and there were all the INCE people sitting around, and it was like a trial. I was told to stop organizing these other conferences. And, you know, Bill Lang was the one who instigated this, George Maling told me later. Bill Lang is a very good person, but he has a very poor relationship with other people. Three or four people tried to protect me at the meeting. I remember these people, they spoke up [in my defense]. I should point out, I had the book of proceedings for the Montreal meeting, I think, with me. But only a few papers, very few, only 10 percent were anything to do with noise. The rest were just on general acoustics and vibration topics. And I can remember someone from Wyle Labs was there.

Peppin:

Ken Eldred?

Crocker:

Yes, Eldred protected me. He said, maybe we should join forces with this, because, look, they’ve got a lot of interesting papers. But Bill Lang was against that, and Ken Eldred and another one, Bob Lotz from the CDC [Control Data Corporation], were in favor. Three or four spoke up for me, but the others didn’t. Oh, and Nancy Timmerman, a woman, who’s a very good pianist, also spoke up. She said INCE was not correct. So, the end result was, I was told that they were going to take away the INCE journal editor-in-chief position from me. So, I just resigned from the journal position, in 1994, rather than carry on. I had done it for twenty years. I was at Auburn then. I had a call in 1973. Leo Beranek called me on a Saturday morning and asked me if I would take over as editor of Noise Control Engineering. It had been done so far by Evan Herbert. They wanted to make it like a Scientific American journal and people were so upset. They printed 8,000 copies. The individual article titles had been changed without the authors’ permission and there were some mistakes as well, and people hated it. They wanted to burn all 8,000 copies.

I remember Ken Oliphant, the INCE Treasurer, said “Don’t do that, that’s not right. That’s bad policy. So, they didn’t. But Leo Beranek called me and asked if I would take over the editorship, so I did that. In the end, I did it for twenty years and I thought, well, I will just give up now, let someone else take over. So, it was unhappy. But, you know, these unhappy memories are gradually going away. They are almost completely gone away. Now, all of the younger people don’t have that memory. There is no need for anything like that. If the new organization [now called IIAV] is poorly conceived, it should die, but it seems to have a big following now.

Peppin:

Yes. Yes. All right.

Crocker:

Now, I have a good relationship with the Acoustical Society of America. The ASA is one of the cooperating societies with the IIAV, and scientific societies in many other countries are now, too. Even the Institute of Acoustics in the U.K. was initially against it. There is a whole history of things like that, unhappy things. Yes. The ICA [International Commission of Acoustics] was originally negative about IIAV too. IIAV is one of their members now. IIAV is now cooperating with the IUTAM [International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics]. Sir James Lighthill was important in IUTAM. Our affiliation with the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics was important. We were one of their affiliated members from the very early days in 1996.

Peppin:

Don’t know about it. Well, speaking of publications, there’s a section here for publications, but maybe when you get the draft, you can add from your resume some of your publications. Is that OK?

Crocker:

Yes.

Peppin:

Yes. So, we don’t have to talk about it. OK, good. Let’s move on to the family. So, what’s your present marital status?

Crocker:

Married, to my wife.

Peppin:

OK. What’s your wife’s name?

Crocker:

Ruth Catherine, Catherine with a C.

Peppin:

Ruth Catherine, got you. OK. Is she still teaching?

Crocker:

No, she stopped like me, one year right after me. Twelve years ago, in 2011.

Peppin:

Where did you two meet?

Crocker:

At the Southampton University Jazz Club. I would go to those club meetings held each week. And she was there. She became a student at Oxford University later, soon after we met.

Peppin:

Wow. Nice.

Crocker:

In those days, very few women went to Oxford. It was mostly male-dominated, like Southampton was then. There were seven men to every woman. Of course, things have all changed now.

Peppin:

And so how long was it before… or I should say when and where did you get married?

Crocker:

It was in 1964. I flew back to England. We got married, and I believe, I don’t remember, in June. I don’t remember the exact date, but I should.

Peppin:

[Laughter] Yeah.

Crocker:

And I flew back to England. Then we came back by ship to New York on the Queen Mary, I think, a Cunard Atlantic passenger ocean liner.

Peppin:

Wow. So, you were corresponding with her then by mail, right, when you were in the U.S.?

Crocker:

I did. Excuse me, that Christmas I flew back on a Boeing 707 to England for a week or two over the Christmas period in 1963. So, we were thus corresponding until the wedding. I think it was July 18th, I believe, 1964. So, then we lived in Huntsville, Alabama together for three years. And then after nine months at LTV aerospace in Anaheim, California, we went back to Liverpool. After I had finished my research for my Ph.D., I interviewed for a faculty position in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Liverpool. The people at Liverpool after an interview offered me a position as a lecturer. They were very unhappy when I told them I had a little later been offered a much better job at Purdue University in the USA as an associate professor. They told me they were very unhappy. They said we’ve got to advertise all over again. So, they did. But I think that probably I made a good choice, because I had time [at Purdue] for research, which at Liverpool I wouldn’t have had time.

Peppin:

Yeah. So, do you have kids or a kid?

Crocker:

Two daughters.

Peppin:

Two daughters, and what’s their names?

Crocker:

The first one was in 1969, Anne Claire Crocker. And the second one, Elizabeth, 1971, two years later.

Peppin:

And what are they doing now and where do they live?

Crocker:

Anne has some disabilities from birth. She’s very good at reading. But some of the other things are not very good. But she’s mostly overcome her disabilities. She lived with us until ten years ago. Then I said to myself, I can’t go on like this as I get older. I won’t be able to look after her.

Peppin:

Sure, sure.

Crocker:

I was 70 then, and decided I would need to think of something else eventually for Anne. And so we found a very good organization in Atlanta called the JF&CS, Jewish Family and Career Services. They have several houses where they have people [with disabilities] living together. So, she’s living with three other people in one house. We bought the house for her, and it’s rented to the organization. And so she’s living there. And she volunteered before the pandemic. She had a job at a hairdresser [beauty salon], but now she has some U.S. government support as well.

Peppin:

Do you get to see her at all?

Crocker:

We do frequently.

Peppin:

How about Elizabeth? What’s she doing?

Crocker:

Elizabeth didn’t have any health problems from birth. Her birth was completely normal. And she was a very highly achieving student and got to Brown University and then on to California. And eventually, she came through Boalt Hall College at the University of California. Now she is an attorney. And then she worked for three or four years in the Civil Division of the Justice Department where the U.S. government was fighting the tobacco companies. Then she moved to the Justice Department, which eventually won their suit. Though under the Bush government, the penalty was reduced substantially. The penalty was used to inform people about the dangers of smoking.

And then she got married to another attorney. He spoke German as well as English. He had learned German earlier. And they went to Switzerland, where eventually she got a job, which lasted for ten years. She became the top lawyer for a pharmaceutical company. And then five years ago, they decided they wanted to go back to the U.S., because her husband was born in Texas. So, they went to Austin, Texas, where they are now. And she carried on part-time with the company still in Switzerland as an attorney and with a new company in California. But they have two children, too. So, we have two grandchildren.

Peppin:

Nice. Do you get to see her and the kids?

Crocker:

We did in Switzerland. I was over frequently with meetings. I would get to see her. Ruth and I would go together to Basel, Switzerland. It was a very famous educational center in its time, in the 1600s and 1700s. And it’s a very nice old town. So, we would go there. And we’d been once to Texas and then the pandemic started. Well, now they come to see us in Florida at Christmas. We have a time-share apartment there.

Peppin:

OK, a couple other things. We’re almost done. These are just the light areas here. Do you have a favorite form of entertainment, going to movies or TV or YouTube or anything?

Crocker:

A little bit on movies. But now with the streaming of Netflix, we watch that. We do still go out if there is a well-known movie being shown locally. We used to like to go to foreign films.

Peppin:

Back when they had movies.

Crocker:

Well, we still go a little bit. But some of these movie houses are going bankrupt now. So, the other thing is music. I like classical music very much and I learned piano when I was seven. Not for very long. Ruth plays the violin, too. So, we’re interested in music. I edited a book on Rimsky-Korsakov, because in Russia I’d go frequently to performances during my Russian visits in the period 1990 to 2020. I met the granddaughter of the composer, Rimsky-Korsakov. She had written a book, which I helped her publish in Russian and then I got it translated into English. And it was published six years ago. I and my Russian young assistant, Marguerita, who worked with me for ten years, helped me improve it more and more. And eventually we found a publisher, Amadeus Press, and we published it in English in the U.S. Now I’m trying to write a book on Tchaikovsky’s music and publish it first in Russian and then in English. I am working with a young Russian woman co-author.

Peppin:

Nice.

Crocker:

The Rimsky-Korsakov book was first published in Russia with my financial help. Then we got our translated and edited version published in English, as I said. It’s just a hobby.

Peppin:

Sure. Marguerita still works with you in IIAV, no?

Crocker:

She had two children and then gradually her parents would come over and help look after the young children. And so she worked with me for nine and a half years. But four years ago, she had a third child and that was too much for her. She stopped working full-time for me, but she has sometimes still helped recall some IIAV and ICSV things from her memory and do some other things to help IIAV. She also helped me with the editing of my last book on Engineering Acoustics: Noise and Vibration Control, which was published by John Wiley & Sons in January 2021. Yes, I’m still in touch with her a little bit.

Peppin:

Okay, good. Are you involved in any kind of sports?

Crocker:

Not really,

Peppin:

Yeah, me neither.

Crocker:

I’m not very good at tennis. Ruth is better at it. Somehow, I’m just not very good at it. I’m good at table tennis, but not tennis.

Peppin:

Do you have any plans? I personally don’t have any plans, but do you have any plans for the future? Maybe moving or doing something else or anything?

Crocker:

Well, we keep tossing ideas around. Our close friends here at Auburn have retired, or moved away, many of them. Or else, many of my friends have died in different countries. Sometimes we thought about going back to England. But with our daughter Anne living in a group home in Atlanta, it’s not easy to leave her. Our other daughter is living in Austin, Texas. So, we thought about it, of moving to North Carolina to one or other of our other friends. But we need to keep living fairly close to Atlanta if we can. Hopefully we get to visit our daughter there. We thought of bringing her back here to Auburn during the pandemic, but that wouldn’t have been good. She’s now been vaccinated, and I’ve been vaccinated a second and third time, too. Have you had that yet?

Peppin:

I had my first. My second is at the end of February.

Crocker:

My second was three weeks after the first.

Peppin:

Good, good for you.

Crocker:

We hope we get to see our daughters again.

Peppin:

Sure, that’d be great. All right. I don’t have anything else, but do you have anything you want to add that we put into the record, so to speak, anything you want to talk about?

Crocker:

Only the Encyclopedia of Acoustics, which received rave reviews when it was published in 1997.

Peppin:

Right. And you can add that when you get the draft.

Crocker:

Just the listing of my books, that’s about all. I will include the listings of my books and honors and awards at the end. My CV is also available.

Peppin:

OK, well, all right, we’re done now, so I don’t know how long this will take. I’m going to ask them to hurry it up, but we’ll try to get a transcript for you pretty soon and maybe it’ll come to me first and then you. But I’ll get it out the same day I get it, for sure.

Crocker:

Happy to do that. Yes, I did some consulting and often had to be an expert witness and had to read these legal documents. I had to edit my transcripts. OK.

Peppin:

If you want, you can add your resume to the transcript, too. It’ll be in Word.

Crocker:

Yes, but I’ve got one resume that’s very long.

Peppin:

Well, you don’t have to. Do whatever you think is best.

Crocker:

One is three pages and then other one is, like, 70 pages.

Peppin:

Oh, jeez.

Crocker:

Whatever.

Peppin:

That’s the encyclopedia. [Laughter]

Crocker:

It’s good to have it because if anyone wants to write anything more, they can.

Peppin:

Right. They want to know about you. OK, well, this was great, Malcolm.

Crocker:

Thanks. Good to talk to you again. Maybe we’ll meet again one day.

Peppin:

Thank you. I hope we get to see each other again. Me too. OK.

Crocker:

That would be nice. Yes, I remember how kind you were with me when I was at Penn State in a lodging. And I said I must walk back and forth to the ASA meeting. And you just said, here’s my car key, I don’t need it, I’m staying at the campus. And so I had your car for three or four days. Great, thank you. It was a pleasure to work with you, too, for this short time.

Peppin:

Thank you. OK, bye-bye, Malcolm.

 

HONORS, AWARDS, RECOGNITIONS

1. Rayleigh medal, Institute of Acoustics, UK, 2024

2. American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME Per Bruel Gold Medal Award for Noise Control and Acoustics 2017

3. Distinguished Professor, Polytechnic University, Cluj, Romania, 2008.

4. Editor-in-chief, Handbook of Noise and Vibration Control, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 130 chapters, 1600 pages, 2007

5. Honorary Doctorate, Polytechnic University of Romania, Bucharest, Romania, 2004

6. Elected member of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, 2002

7. Honorary Doctorate, University of Craiova, Craiova, Romania, 2000

8. Honorary Member, General Association of Engineers of Romania, 2000

9. Honorary Member, Romanian Society of Acoustics, 2000

10. Distinguished Guest Plenary Lecture, Acoustical Society of America Meeting, November 1-5, 1999

11. Editor-in-chief, Handbook of Acoustics, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1461 pages total, 1998

12. Encyclopedia of Acoustics wins award for excellence by Association of American Publishers for Professional and Scholarly Books, 1997.

13. Editor-in-chief, Encyclopedia of Acoustics, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 4 vols., 2017 pages total, 1997.

14. Chief Scientific Editor and then Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Acoustics and Vibration (IJAV), 1996-2015

15. Executive Director, International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration (IIAV), 1995-present

16. Honorary Doctorate, Baltic State Technical University, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1995

17. Chair, Editorial Board, Noise Abstracts and Reviews, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1994-1996.

18. Third International Congress on Recent Developments in Air- and Structure- Bome Sound and Vibration, Montreal, Canada, 1994 (General Chairman)

19. Co-chair, NOISE- 93, the International Noise and Vibration Control Conference, St. Petersburg, Russia, May 31 - June 3, 1993.

20. Institute of Noise Control Engineering/USA (INCE) Education Award, 1992 (Certificate and Cash Award).

21. Second International Congress on Recent Developments in Air- and Structure- Bome Sound and Vibration, Auburn University, 1992 (General Chairman)

22. Guest of Organizing Committee, Environmental Acoustics Conference, Leningrad, USSR, May 1990.

23. Named Distinguished University Professor, Auburn University, 1990

24. International Congress on Recent Developments in Air- and Structure- Bome Sound and Vibration, Auburn University, 1990 (General Chairman)

25. UN Expert, Kolar Gold Field, India, 1987

26. UN Expert, Benares, India, 1986

27. Honorary Fellow, Acoustical Society of India, 1985-Present

28. National Academy of Sciences/World Bank Lecturer in Shanghai, China, March/April 1985

29. Honorary Member of Pi Tau Sigma (Mechanical Engineering Honorary). 1985

30. Plaque and Cash Award: Outstanding Acoustical Paper, 1984 Nelson Acoustics Conference.

31. M, J. Crocker and W.W. Lang, Guest Lecturers, First International Seminar on Control of Noise, Rio de Janiero, Brasil, 1984.

32. Chairman, American National Standards Institute, Committee, ANSI S12-21, (Sound Power from Sound Intensity), 1983-Present. Their standard was published in 1992.

33. U.S. delegate to International Electrotechnical Commission committee (IEC/TC29/WG20-Sound Intensity Measurement), 1985-1995

34. U.S. delegate to International Standardization Organization Committee (ISO/TC43/SCI/WG25 -Sound Power from Sound Intensity), 1982-present

35. U.S. delegate to International Standardization Organization Committee ISO/TC/43/SCl/WG22-Structure-Bome Noise, 1982-present

36. President of Institute of Noise Control Engineering/US 1981.

37. General Chairman, Noise-Con 79, National Noise Control Conference

38. U.S. delegate to International Standardization Organization Committee ISO/TC/43/SCl/WG3- Air-Conditioning Noise, 1977-present

39. Member, Editorial Board of Polish Acoustical Journal; Archives of Acoustics, Warsaw, Poland 1976-Present

40. Certificate and Cash Award: Best ASHRAE Symposium Paper of 1975.

41. Founding Director of International Institute of Noise Control Engineering, 1974

42. Chairman, ASHRAE Technical Committee on Sound and Vibration Control, 1974-5

43. Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, 1973

44. Editor-in-Chief, NOISE CONTROL ENGINEERING JOURNAL, 1973-1994

45. General Chairman, Inter-Noise 72, (First) International Noise Control Engineering Conference, Washington, DC, (1400 attendees), 1972

46. Founding member of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering/USA, 1971

47. Purdue Noise Control Conference, West Lafayette, IN, 1971 (Chairman).

48. Sonically Induced Vibration of Structures, Liverpool University, 1969 (Organizer).

BOOK PUBLICATIONS

I published over 100 refereed journal papers and about 200 written conference papers along with my graduate students. In addition, I authored numerous book chapters and sponsor reports. These are not listed in the following. They can be found in my CV if desired. The only ones listed here are complete books and books of proceedings.

1. Crocker, M. J., Editor, Tutorial Papers on Noise Control, INTER-NOISE 72, October 4-6, 1972, 134 pages.

2. Crocker, M. J., Editor, Proceedings of INTER- NOISE 72, International Conference on Noise Control Engineering, October 4-6, 1972, 565 pages.

3. Crocker, M. J. (Editor), “Noise and Vibration Control Engineering,” Proceedings of the Purdue Noise Control Conference, July 1971, Published May 1972, (594 pages).

4. Crocker, M. J., Editor, “Reduction of Machinery Noise,” Proceedings of the Purdue Short Courses Fundamentals of Noise Control and Reduction of Machinery Noise, May 1974, (369 pages). 

5. Crocker, M. J. and Price, A. J., “Noise and Noise Control,” Volume I, CRC Press Inc., Cleveland, Ohio, 1975, 299 pages.

6. Crocker, M. J., Editor, Reduction of Machinery Noise, Revised Edition, Proceedings of the two Short Courses, “Fundamentals of Noise Control” and “Reduction of Machinery Noise,” held at Purdue University, December 8-12, 1975, (565 pages).

7. Crocker, M. J., and Kessler, F. M., “Noise and Noise Control,” Volume II, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1982, 300 pp.

8. Crocker, M. J., “Noise Control,” Benchmark Papers in Acoustics, Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Inc., Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, 1983.

9. Crocker, M. J., (Editor of Book of Proceedings), Proceedings of International Congress on Recent Developments in Air- and Structure-Borne Sound and Vibration, March 6-8, 1990, 960 pages.

10. Crocker, M. J. and Ivanov, N.I. (co-editors), Noise and Vibration Control in Vehicles, Interpublish Ltd., St. Petersburg 1993, 352 pages.

11. Crocker, M. J., Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Acoustics, published (together with authorship of 180 contributing authors) by John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1997, 2000 pages.

12. M.J. Crocker, Editor-in-Chief, Handbook of Acoustics, published (together with contributing authors) by John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

13. M. J. Crocker: Editor in Chief, Handbook of Noise and Vibration Control, John Wiley, New York, 2007, 1600 pages.

14. M. J. Crocker and M. Maksotskaya (co-editors), Rimsky-Korsakov – Letters to His Family and Friends, Amadeus Press, 2016.

15. M. J. Crocker and J. P. Arenas, Engineering Acoustics -- Noise and Vibration Control , John Wiley, New York, 2021